The high school football season is here and ready to kick off starting Friday night (cue 'Monday Night Football' theme).

While every football game is important to a team's success, the first one starts off the season and tells a little bit about a team. Friday night at 7:30 p.m. the Dover Pirates will visit the Atkins Red Devils in their annual Rivals Cup.

Every coach will tell you the first game is important, but Charlie Sorrels and Taylor are having to deal with extra emotions playing in a game that means more to the players than just the start of a season.

"When you have a special game like this, you always worry about emotions being too high," Sorrels said. "I hope we can just try to play our game offensively and have some success throwing the ball. I think Dover is much improved and they are more versatile."

Both coaches said their teams were fairly healthy and in good shape. Taylor said the Pirates had a high-energy and physical practice Tuesday. Sorrels, on the other hand, said his team needs to be more versatile.

In order for the Pirates game plan to have success ,,Taylor said the team needs to keep Atkins Red DevilTerence Bobo in check. He said defensively he felt the team had a good practice. Offensively, he said he saw some things he liked but was going to eliminate and fine-tune his gameplan before Friday.

"I know he [Bobo] is going to make his yards, but if we can keep him out of the end zone and make him work," Taylor said, "not really give him anything easy, then I think that will be a key for us defensively."

"Offensively we need to keep them off-balanced," the coach said. "Try to keep them off the field a little bit and if we can do that, then we got a good chance."

Sorrels said he believes the key to victories will be the intangibles. Who makes turnovers, who has the least penalties and so forth. He said his team was ready and had been working hard in practice for their season opener, but was only worried about having too much emotion.

"You always have question marks, and you always wonder if you're prepared for the first game," Sorrels said.

Both teams will look to claim bragging rights for this year's season opener at Atkins.